Bioremediation of Raw Landfill Leachate Using Galdieria sulphuraria: An Algal-Based System for Landfill Leachate Treatment

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the potential of using a thermophilic acidophilic red alga, Galdieria sulphuraria for effective on-site treatment of municipal landfill leachate (LL). This study focused on evaluating the effects of LL dilution, nitrogen loading, and initial algal biomass density on the overall treatment efficiency, and evaluated the long-term performance of the system using 5-day growth cycles. This study confirmed that optimal conditions for G. sulphuraria biomass production are 20% strength LL, a lower initial biomass concentration of 0.25 g L−1, and the addition of N at twice the level of initial media. Furthermore, the results indicated G. sulphuraria’s ability to grow in elevated NH4-N concentration (>950 mg L−1) and provide nitrogen removal rates of up to 40 mg L−1 d−1. In addition, the long-term running experiment showed that the proposed algal-based system could be applied in semi-continuous mode to achieve bioremediation. Overall, the results obtained from this study can be used to develop the necessary process parameters to implement large-scale algal-based systems for landfill leachate treatment.